These Are Only Walls
by Alice Starling
Summary: Some days Peter Bishop feels like he's waiting on the world; and sometimes he feels like the world is waiting on him. His heart tastes so incredibly bitter.


**These Are Only Walls**

_you and i were made for this,  
>i was made to taste your kiss,<br>we were made to never fall away_

i.

They don't actually go on dates at first; they don't need to. It is too easy to slip into being _PeterandOlivia_, _OliviaandPeter_; they fall into place like puzzle pieces, stumbling from this awkward dance of theirs into what they were always meant to be. Peter would like to think of them as a seamless sort of yin and yang, except he's not entirely sure which of them is the dark and which is the light. Maybe they are more like opposite sides of a half-dollar; both flashing silver beacons in the shadows, some sliver of metallic glimmer in the cobwebbed dark. They aren't who they were before, that first time for some reason only Peter remembers—when they were young and beautiful and their souls were the same color as their field of tulips. There are little scraps of darkness inside them both—because, he supposes, they were meant to carry out wars and hunt monsters in the night—but they match up perfectly, like a string of dark stars that spell out some wondrous constellation.

When you have all of that, it is too easy to skip the "dating" part of the relationship, especially when the majority of your time is spent at gore-strewn crime scenes. They try twice, and both times they are called away to go fight crime and participate in other valiant world-saving activities. The third time is a charm, though. It is of course not a conventional first date, or conventionally romantic one—they are not conventional people, and after twice failing at the whole dress-tie-fancy-restaurant thing, Peter decides to take a different route.

"_Star_ _Wars_?" Olivia asks. "At a drive-in?" She has this look on her face, like she's much more pleased and amused by this that she thinks she ought to be. "I didn't even think they still _had_ drive-in movie theaters."

"It's retro," Peter tells her, knowing already that she is going to agree to it.

That night, with Olivia snuggled in under his arm and Luke and Leia bickering on the big screen, Peter is sure that he's never had a better first date. It is warm and soft and beautiful, tainted by none of that bitterness that so often infects everything they do and everything they are. It is pure and good, two things that Peter used to fear he'd lost forever. The trickster god and the warrior woman who can burn the world down when she's afraid, except in this moment they are just Peter and Olivia, hanging out like love-struck teenagers at the drive-in theater.

Besides, Peter has to admit: it is a much cuter story to tell their children than, "I slept with your mother's alternate self and spent weeks begging for her forgiveness until she showed up on my doorstep with a bottle of booze." At least, it would have been.

Out of all the things he mourns for, this is one that swells and catches in his heart: that simple moment, free of their other darkness, lost in the cracks of time.

'_cause even though you left me here  
>i have nothing left to fear<br>these are only walls that hold me here_

ii.

Peter Bishop is a caged tiger.

Even after the DNA test, after he has proved the core of his being, and they have let him on reluctantly as a consultant, he feels like a prisoner. Not only because the others don't trust him, although every suspicious look Olivia shoots him is like a knife to the heart, but it's in the way they look at him. Like he is something dangerous, some wild untamed thing pacing around a dusty house that could any moment turn on its handlers, but at the same time like he is something pitiable. He does not belong; he fell into this world and even though they gave him an enclosure and surrounded him with iron bars, he is still something remarkably Other.

And so he prowls; moves like some lethargic predator, grins like some carnivorous beast. It has been a long time since he has been so distrusted—since he joined Fringe Division, the first time—and some sick masochistic part of him is reveling in it. He should be worked towards regaining their trust—Walter's trust and Olivia's trust and Astrid's and Broyles's—but suddenly he is what he was a lifetime ago and it is hard to respond graciously to their suspicion and fear.

He sees the way Olivia looks at him, and the way that Olivia looks at Lincoln Lee. He feels it in his heart, everything time that Walter flinches from him or Olivia edges away, desperate to keep a cushion of space between them. And even though he loves these people, or loved who they were and could be, loves them more than anything else, it is so very hard to remember that when they look at him like any moment he might rebel and bite them.

But he won't, even if sometimes he pretends that he's the same deceit-wrapped con man he was a lifetime ago. He pretends, just occasionally when his heart tastes so incredibly bitter, that he is the same hard-shelled, hard-hearted, resilient bastard that he never was to begin with. But he will never ever hurt them (again)—not if he can help it. It doesn't matter that Olivia looks at him like she's afraid (not afraid of him, of course, but afraid of what he might do or maybe _Godhehopesandwishesandprays_ afraid because some core of her recognizes him even though the rest of her doesn't). Because he still loves her, and it doesn't matter what she thinks, he will alwaysalways love her. And someday, she will remember that—remember all of the things that made her so undeniably her.

He won't hurt them, even if he is caged and even if he is still trying to find his way home, because he would rather be near the people he loves than anywhere else in all of creation. Besides—it's a step of from nonexistence.

_one day soon i'll hold you  
>like the sun holds the moon<br>and we will hear those planes overhead  
>and we won't have to be scared<em>

iii.

Some days he feels like he's waiting on the world; and sometimes he feels like the world is waiting on him. He doesn't know which it is, really, although the former is torturous and the latter is just completely unfair and so neither of these feelings serve to make him feel any better. He thought that this would all be over quickly, that Walter would fix it and Olivia would remember him; that it would all be okay. It's strange that three years—three years with the healthiest family he can remember—have turned him into a blind optimist, when really he should know better. It doesn't get fixed and so he is stuck, waiting for the world to wake up or with the world waiting for him to just…what? Get over it?

There is just too much goddamn waiting in Peter Bishop's life. It makes him nervous, makes him antsy; he is not a patient person by nature and some days he just wants to throw Olivia against the wall and kiss her until she remembers him. He is smart enough, however, to know that this would probably be an ineffective way to get his Olivia back, and he doesn't want to mess this up any more than the universe always has.

(Except it's not that she needs to be _his_ Olivia; it's that she needs to remember that he is _her_ Peter.)

So he waits; not because he wants to, but because it's the only thing he can do. He spends a lot of time going over old case files with Lincoln Lee, mostly to see how things have changed but also because he wants to see what has stayed the same. Some things surprise him: they have never encountered the Observers (which is an enormous red flag to Peter), and the first time that they dealt with any of the other Cortexiphan children is when they found Cameron James and brought Peter back.

That means that Nick Lane is still alive and well, which Peter is glad for but it still makes his heart throb with a kind of dull, tired jealousy, even though he has so much bigger things to worry about. It's just that Nick seemed like one of those few people who can look at Olivia and see everything that she is and appreciate it all—Peter actually sees that in Lincoln, too, but Lincoln has been too good a friend to him for Peter to start some rivalry here.

Besides, Peter isn't worried. He and Olivia—blonde and intense and like the fire that burns at the heart of the world—they belong together. They are fate. Not even reality being warped could keep them apart.

_you're coming back for me  
>you're coming back for me<br>you're coming back to me_

iv.

Peter never used to believe in Fate, or destiny or that some things are just meant to happen. In fact, he still really doesn't believe in Fate, not as an overall concept. There is no universal plan, no book or map or anything that has everyone's choices spilled out across the pages. No, Peter Bishop does not believe in Fate—but he believes that he and Olivia are fated for each other.

He's sure there's some appropriate literary quote or some ridiculously flowery metaphor, but Olivia said it first (even if she doesn't remember) and said it best, in four little beautiful words.

And while Peter misses the way the world is supposed to be—misses having a real-life badass superhero in love with him, misses Walter and the way he was crazy and sad but he was the best father he could be in his own mad scientist way—Peter is not worried. He is angry sometimes, depressed on the bad days, but he is never worried. If he has learned anything, it is that Olivia Dunham will always find her way back to him.

She and he were made for this.


End file.
